United Nations Refugee Agency, international community to support Moldova in management of Ukrainian refugees' crisis

Chisinau, 10 March /MOLDPRES/ - The United Nations Refugee Agency will give the final touches, on the days to come, to a plan on the response to the crisis of refugees from Ukraine. For the beginning, this plan includes support for Moldova on behalf of the international community. The representative of the UN Refugee Agency for Central Europe, Roland Schilling, made statements to this effect at a today’s joint news conference with the government’s secretary general, Dumitru Udrea, the government’s communication and protocol department has reported.      

„We are aware of the fact that this assistance represents a little at this point; yet, I want to assure you that more assistance is to come; and not only for the refugees from Ukraine, but also for the residents and government of Moldova. We want to have enough resources for the management of this crisis. As we understand quite well that the resources of Moldova’s government are limited and we cannot rely on volunteers endlessly,’’ Roland Schilling noted.    

The UN Refugee Agency will provide support, including for the supply of food products and maintaining placement centres for refugees.   

For his part, Dumitru Udrea stressed that Moldova’s government appreciated the openness of the UN Refugee Agency in the management of the crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine.    

It is worth mentioning that, at the today’s meeting, the Commission for Emergency Situations (CSE) took the decision to simplify the mechanism of import of donations made by private people from abroad for refugees from Ukraine. The CSE members ruled that the donations would be delivered at the Leuseni customs checkpoint, at the warehouse managed by the Centre for Information Technologies in Finance. Private people will declare the consignment of goods through the DV-6 typed form of the customs declaration, as well as other typed forms, which will serve as act of delivery-reception of the donation. Subsequently, the goods will be delivered to the Labour and Social Protection Ministry for distribution to beneficiaries. The customs clearance services will be carried out free of charge.      

Also, starting from today, the mayoralties will be able to open centres of temporary placement for refugees, with the approval of the National Agency for Social Assistance.    

At this point, there are more than 132,000 refugees from Ukraine in Moldova. There are 93 functional authorized centres in the country, of which 39 in Chisinau. There are over 6,000 places available in all.  

The government continues to provide support to the refugees willing to go to destinations of the European Union. In this respect, 137 routes with buses and min-buses were made on 8-10 March 2022 (till 12:00), of which 10 were made today till 12:00. More than 4,600 people were carried in the last two days, including today, at 12:00. Also, the carriage of refugees by railway continues too, with over 2,700 refugees transported by train in the last two days. At the same time, in the last two days, over 700 people were transferred to Israel and Bulgaria by air. The following flights are scheduled for the next three days:   

·      Chisinau - Frankfurt 

·      Chisinau - Istanbul - 2 flights

·      Chisinau - Tel Aviv - 3 flights. 

Another four irregular flights for transfer of 1,784 refugees will be operated on the period 11-13 March with the destinations Germany, Turkey, Spain and Poland.   

Photo: Government